


The Heart of the World is Fire

by ohmyfae, Strange and Intoxicating -rsa- (strangeandintoxicating)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Cyberpunk, High Fantasy, M/M, Some violent imagery, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-15 22:03:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13622427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae, https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeandintoxicating/pseuds/Strange%20and%20Intoxicating%20-rsa-
Summary: In the chaotic, Scourge-infested city of Gralea, a member of the anti-imperial resistance struggles against insurmountable odds.A few blocks down, a new professor with a secret to keep settles into a life of self-exile, the magic of his past abandoned.Their meeting will bring more than just a spark to the cold wastes of Niflheim. It will bring an inferno, beautiful and all-consuming, which will change the course of not only their lives, but of Eos itself.A collaborative work for Ignoct Week!





	1. Chapter 1

It was said that the heart of the world was fire.

It was said that the heat that governed the currents of the ocean, shifted rock, and raised the wind that whirled through the mountains of Tenebrae was a swirling sphere of fire that clenched like a fist in the center of the earth. It carried with it the magic of creation, the breath of being that pulsed through every living creature, every tree and bird and hulking daemon. Now and then, it would twist, just a little, and a small, weak piece of itself would go racing up through the earth and stagger into the open, wide-eyed and mewling.

That, his mothers said, was how they found him. A small boy running barefoot through the mountains like all dragon-children; wingless and groundless, with a heart made of flame. His mothers met him there, taught him how to shift, how to listen to the magic that was the core of him, and when he rose with the leathery wings of a true dragon at last, they gave him his name.

Ignis.

"Ignis!"

His third and youngest mother had scales of a light, tawny brown edged with gold, and she was the most fearful of his family, spreading her great wings over herself at the slightest sound in the canopy of their home. Ignis knew her as the weaver of spells to heal cuts and bruises, the singer, the one who held him to her breast and laughed while his first and second mothers made spirals in the twilit skies.

She was the last to fall, weaving desperately through the smoke of cannon fire, flame spitting from her jaws in erratic bursts. Her wives lay beneath her, charred and gasping in the ravaged earth, and when she cried Ignis' name, her voice carried with it a spell so strong that Ignis was cast out of the sky.

He shifted as he fell, wings folding about him as he took his two-legged shape, buffeted by the winds of Tenebrae. His last mother screeched a horrible shout of defiance, and Ignis felt a spell rolling on his tongue in response, a plea, a name. _Mother._ The troops of Tenebrae's militia aimed their terrible, gleaming cannons. _Mother._ The bodies that had once been his family wheezed a curse into the bloodstained grass. _Mother._ He closed his eyes as the cannons fired, felt this final death like a shard of iron worming through his heart, and landed in the marsh with a sickening crack.

When he woke, covered in mud and sobbing into his hands, Ignis' mothers had already been carted off, proof that the last of the dragons that had cast their shadows over Tenebrae's capital were gone, ushering in the first grand and glorious age of humanity.

 

\---

 

“Mr. Scientia?”

Ignis glanced up. His charcoal-grey suit matched the steel and iron of the station around him, and he rose silently, holding a travel bag at his side. Unlike the others on the station platform, he didn’t shiver and stamp in the breeze, and his breath formed great clouds of steam as he spoke.

“Yes, sir?” He leaned towards the customs kiosk, fogging the glass. The man on the other side squinted and shoved a paper under the slot.

“Everything went through,” the man said. “Welcome to Niflheim, Mr. Scientia.”

Ignis smiled, flashing teeth a little too long and sharp, and tucked the paper in his jacket pocket.

Before him, the buildings of Gralea were lumped together in a jagged huddle, skyscrapers forming an uneven barrier against the frozen tundra on all sides. It was this way when Ignis was a child, flying through the floating cliffs of Tenebrae: Gralea had been merely a smudge of soot and smog in the far distance. Ignis remembered the first of his mothers warning him, pointing to the faraway snowclouds with a shiver of her lovely blue and black scales.

“Niflheim is not kind to us,” she’d said. “It is too cold, too unfeeling. The humans there have no respect for magic. They're dangerously uncivilized, Ignis, even by human standards. No dragon has lived there in centuries.”

“Humans aren't so bad,” Ignis had said. He used to walk among them, sometimes, trying on his human shape and seeing how long it took before his strange accent and sharp eyes gave him away.

“Oh, Ignis,” his mother had said, folding her massive wing over him, “You’ll learn. I can only hope the lesson is a soft one.”

Some two hundred years later, Ignis descended the steps of Gralea’s central station and turned his face to the bitter wind. It was heavy with snow--A poor wind for flying, if Ignis dared to fly--and thick with the scent of exhaust and grit. Ignis coughed into his arm and flagged down a taxi.

What he got was a cart, pulled by a chocobo so padded and quilted against the cold that they looked like a misshapen pile of comforters with the suggestion of feathers. The bird clucked at Ignis, shying into his hand, and the driver’s eyes crinkled in a smile over his thick red scarf.

“Brave man!” he shouted. Ignis blinked, and he pointed to his suit. “Let's get you out of the cold, eh!”

“Thank you,” Ignis said. He climbed into the back of the cart, and the driver tossed a blanket his way. He dutifully draped it on his knees and leaned towards the edge of the cart, hooking an arm over the partition between him and the driver’s seat. He handed the driver the card with his new address, and the driver huffed.

“Right in the middle of town, huh?” he said, and clicked his teeth. The chocobo slowly plodded off down the street, taking over most of the bike lane. “Nice place to live.”

“I suppose it would be,” Ignis said, and sat back in the cart, watching flakes of snow turn to steam in the air around him. “For some.”

His apartment was nestled between the tech district, which his driver scornfully called the _Gate_ , and one of Gralea’s few remaining universities. What greenery there was looked nothing like the trees and grasses of Tenebrae. The most Ignis could see was a scraggly evergreen leaning in front of the apartment, drooping under the weight of that morning’s snowfall. Ignis hefted his bag and left what he hoped was a decent tip, skirted a man barreling past, and pounded on the front door.

His landlady was a skinny, dreadfully young creature with white blonde hair and a wide smile. “You're the professor!” she cried. “Oh, the others are gonna be so excited. None of the faculty ever lives in this part of town, you know.”

Ignis smiled vaguely, and the woman went on, racing up the stairs. “Mostly what we get here are scientists, trying to get jobs in the military after school is over, but you get a few history buffs, and there's a poet in the attic. You aren't a poetry teacher, are you?”

“Astrophysics,” Ignis said. The landlady pulled a face.

“Almost as bad. No one makes any money on stars. Okay, you're up here. Second door, try not to talk to Harris in 3B, he’s always got something going on, and don't jimmy the back door open if you lose your keys.”

Ignis’ vague smile remained, frozen on his face, as she peeled a set of keys off a keyring and plopped them in his hand.

“Welcome to Niflheim, Professor…”

“Scientia,” Ignis said.

“Oh my gods, you're kidding.”

Ignis’ smile turned, if anything, vaguer still. He waited for the landlady to leave, but she was clearly waiting for _him,_ so he awkwardly jerked around and opened the door to his apartment.

It was a small set of rooms, with holes in the walls that revealed plumbing pipes that were newly repaired, bits of insulation littering the floor, and a somewhat functional kitchen. Ignis set his bag down on the worn, dark blue sofa and tried to remember what his old home had been like.

Woven branches. Soft beds of moss. Laughter, and the taste of magic on his tongue.

Ignis peeled off his gloves, which were already starting to burn at the fingertips, and made a slight gesture with his right hand. A ball of fire sparked to life, hanging in the air, and when Ignis prodded it, it twisted and curled until it took the shape of a small, fiery dragon, throwing off sparks with each flap of its wings.

The last dragon of Tenebrae sighed and swept a hand through his creation, dispelling it, and got up to unpack.


	2. Chapter 2

It was said that the heart of the world was fire.

N bit down on the filter of his cigarette as he stared at the coding on his screen, the strings and strings of green against the black backdrop making N's head spin. He'd been looking at the mix of letters and symbols for the last three hours and it still didn't make one lick of sense, though the longer N stared at it the more it morphed back and forth into a canopy of leaves. He could almost imagine the blue sky and the white clouds peeking their way through the green. The way the sun would catch on the leaves as it bled down into the grass— 

That grass was on fire, smoldering under him. N could feel the heat against his skin, the burning as the flames danced up his arms and legs. He could taste the blood and ash in the air, hear the wails of MTs dropping from the sky and then the hush of a battle lost. 

After that, it was the screams.

N closed his eyes and took a deep breath in, pulling the smoke into his lungs. He could almost hear Lu nagging him about smoking in his room, even though she was still down in the _Gate_ doing Astrals only knew what. It was better to leave Lu alone when she was in one of her moods, N knew. The last thing N needed was to get stuck down in the _Gate_ again, slogging through the Scourge-infected and MTs.  

MTs. That was another thing N remembered, but only just so. N could remember the sounds of their boots marching through the grass, the squelching of metal and blood, the feeling of omething picking him up and sending him soaring through the air...  

N opened his eyes and pulled the cigarette from his lips, smashing the butt into the overflowing ashtray next to his keyboard. He gave one last look at the coding before sighing in disgust, pushing his chair away from the computer. It didn't matter how long he stared at the Astrals-damned thing, it wasn't going to change anything. The Nifs knew their programming and since their last raid they were finally catching onto some of N's tricks. 

Fucking B. 

It wasn't like N could rush, even if he wanted to. The bursts of inspiration came and went as they pleased, accompanied by the smell of boiling blood and the feeling of fire making its way into his skin. Some of the others, the few that were left of the original Resistance, used to laugh at him and his flighty skills. How N was their best hacker the Astrals only knew, but he was like a bird with one clipped wing, gliding on the breeze until an unearthly gust knocked him back down to earth.

Lu said he had always been like that, ever since she saved him from the labs when he was still a kid. She hadn't said much more than that, and N wasn't ever inclined to ask again.

"No luck?"

N rubbed at the back of his neck as he swiveled his chair, looking up to the doorway. "Oh, it's  _ you _ ."

"Wow, way to sound excited." 

"Lu isn't here—"

Nyx waved off N as he pushed off from the steel doorway. "Yeah, yeah. I know. She sent me to come get you. Said you were gunna choke to death if you didn't get out of this place." Nyx made an exaggerated gesture in front of his face, some of the smoke wafting through the stagnant air. "Looks like she was right."

"Does she know I'm an adult and that I can take care of myself?" N stood and stretched up his arms, the sound of popping making N shudder. The pain laced up his arms and down his legs, radiating from the knot in the middle of his back. "You're not even supposed to be here today. Shouldn't you be running to Altissia?"

"Got cancelled. Not much need for those packages anymore with the Nifs' new reinforcements."

N hissed as he lowered his arms. 

"You really should get that looked at," Nyx said before throwing himself onto the nearby couch.  He grabbed one of N's pillows, propping it under his head. "And you can tell her that. I'm not going through the meat grinder for you again. Lu's still pissed about the whole shitshow last week."

N snorted. "Yeah, well. I'm pissed, too. If I knew that the Nifs finally found the hole in their mainframe, I wouldn't have tried to hack it in the first place." N gestured at the computer, hoping that his hands explained his frustration better than his words.

"You know she's just worried about you. B's entire cell was—"

"Wiped out. Yeah, Nyx. I know. I was there." It had been bloody; the Nifs preferred annihilation first, questioning never. The MTs hadn't even bothered to clean up the bodies, opting to leave their rotting corpses littering the safehouse as a warning to the Resistance. N didn't know how long they were there, but it was long enough for the smell to finally seep into the neighboring apartments... long enough for word to get back to N. And long enough for the Nifs to patch up the holes in their security breach. "Did you guys figure out what happened? Snitch?"

Nyx shook his head. "Glitch. Looks like one of their techies didn't deprogram all their tags. Set off the detectors. They didn't even see it coming."

"Fucked over everything just for a bit of spite. Guess that's what they get for thinking they were better than Lu."

"Don't let her hear you say that. You know she's making herself sick with all the guilt. And anyway—"

"I know, I know. It isn't a zero sum game. We're all on the same side. _Yada yada yada._ You don't need to tell me twice, Nyx." N pulled up his hood, slipping Lu's lovingly-crafted tags out onto his chest.  "Trust me. The Nifs are goin' down... as soon as I can figure out what they've got hidden in those files. Wish B had given me like a week more before getting himself busted. I was _close_ , Nyx. So fucking close." 

Nyx only let out a hum. 

"How bad's the snow?"

"Same as usual. Cold as Shiva's tits," Nyx said. "Still can't believe they just left that thing in the middle of Ghorovas Rift."

N shrugged as he leaned down to grab his thick gray coat from the floor, giving it a few good shakes before throwing it on, not bothering to button it up. "We're lucky they didn't drop her corpse on Gralea. Lu down in the _Gate_ again?"

"Where else would she be?"

"Point. Don't burn the place down while I'm gone." N lifted his hand in a half wave as he turned on his heel. He followed the little white cord down the hallway, noting that some of the tape on the wall trim was coming loose. He'd pick up some in Sol later on, if he was lucky to pull Lu away from whatever caught her fancy now. 

N was careful to close the door with both hands before slipping his keycard into the thin metal slot behind the original lock, watching the little blue light flash once for Nyx. Some would have thought it bordering on paranoia, but N knew that it was a bandaid over a bullet hole. And it wasn't really paranoia when N knew that the Nifs  _ were _ after him, was it?

Still, it was better to fry his computers out than let the Nifs get their hands on any of the data he had squirreled away.

N shoved the keycard into his pocket as he turned down the hall and followed the hallway then down the winding stairwell until he hit the first floor. He nearly slipped on the patch of ice on the front walkway when he managed to get the half-frozen door open. 

The storm from the night before left a hazy gray powder of snow on top of what was leftover from the massive blizzard a few days prior. It was always cold in Gralea, always covered with a blanket of gray slush, but... It was better than the labs.

Anything was better than the labs, really.

It wasn't a bad area to live—near enough to the University that N and the others could pass as broke college students, but far enough away from the MT hubs that they could sleep at night. N knew there were a few other cells nearby, but it was better to work independently. Too much structure would lead to a spiderweb that someone would end up accidentally wandering into...

Being too close meant feelings. Feelings meant guilt. Guilt meant mistakes. 

N didn't have time for any of that.

N ground his boots into the gray snow, keeping his head down and his eyes trained on the sidewalk. He narrowly missed walking into a man getting off one of the chocobo carriages, though managed to swerve around him and down the alleyway to the right. It wasn't his usual way in, but all roads led to one place in Gralea.

And N allowed himself to be guided down into the _Gate_ , following the static electricity humming in his ears and a memory that faded into the neon abyss, the man he nearly bumped into a far away memory in his mind.


End file.
